Meet the Doctors and Staff

Dr. Brön Hedman

Born and raised in rural Michigan, Dr. Hedman learned the importance of family and hard work. He grew up loving the outdoors, with forests, lakes, and trout streams nearby. His mother, a nurse, often told wonderful stories about the patients and doctors she worked with. He loved these stories and from a young age knew he would someday be a doctor.

Dr. Hedman started his higher education at Michigan State University where he graduated with high honors in biochemistry in 1993 and went on to medical school at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He enjoyed many areas of patient care, but it was the Family Medicine rotation that really grabbed his interest. This became apparent when his mentor in Family Medicine introduced Dr. Hedman to a family he had been treating for 3 generations! From that day on, he would seek a future in Family Medicine.

Dr. Hedman was accepted into the University of California, Davis School of Medicine Family Medicine Residency Program. He moved to Sacramento in 1997 to start his training and fell in love with the people and beauty of Northern California. The residency program proved to be a wonderful experience and Dr. Hedman was honored with serving as Chief Resident and being awarded the 2000 Outstanding Resident Leadership Award of the Sacramento Chapter of the California Academy of Family Physicians.

After graduation, Dr. Hedman decided to take a less common path and packed up to travel and work across the country. For nearly three years, he worked as a traveling physician to expand his medical and people skills in many diverse medical settings. This was also a great opportunity to see these great United States! He came back “home” to the Sacramento area in 2003 and accepted a position with Turnure Medical Group in Rocklin where he stayed until the formation of Placer Private Physicians in 2014.

Dr. Hedman believes happy, healthy doctors are caring doctors and that is why he focuses on eating healthy and exercising. He loves learning and keeps up with the latest medical research and health news. He enjoys the outdoors including hiking, backpacking, fly fishing, and simple walks with his “girls” Stella and Tikka.

Dr. Hedman enjoys all aspects of primary care including the opportunity to focus on health and wellness and disease prevention. He has special interest in treating obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cholesterol disorders, fibromyalgia, and mood disorders.

“I have never doubted my choice in becoming a doctor or choosing a career in Family Medicine and I am honored to serve my patients. However, I had become more and more frustrated working in the traditional insurance company model that rewards quantity over quality and devalues the time I spend with my patients. Compassionate and comprehensive primary care demands having adequate time. That is why I am excited to be offering my patients direct primary care. I now have the time to focus on each individual patient and family.”

Dr. Brön Hedman

Dr. Rich Lichti

A native of California, I studied exercise physiology and health sciences at St. Mary’s College in Moraga where I met my beautiful wife Christine. We married and moved to Omaha where we both attended Creighton; medical school and nursing school. My training in Family Medicine at the Creighton University Medical Center kept us in Omaha for 3 more years. We started our family in Omaha with two beautiful girls, Hannah and Rachel. Ultimately the pull of family and the weather proved to be too great and brought us back to the bay area for my fellowship year in Sports medicine in San Jose. After finishing the one year program, it was my wife’s turn to choose where we went. She took her dream nursing job at the UC Davis Medical Center. I worked for a few years at a practice in Rocklin, but found a better fit and joined Turnure Medical Group, where for the past 8 years I helped to build an excellent primary care practice.

Choosing to settle in the Sacramento area has been wonderful. In 2009 we decided we were not done growing our family, and chose to pursue adoption. In 2010 Sebastian and Alejandra, a sibling pair from the foster care system, were adopted into our family. Adoption has been both challenging and rewarding, often at the same time. The blessings we have been given through our professions, family and adoption, Bayside Church, and our wonderful friends are truly amazing. My family and I also love the close proximity to lakes, mountains, and outdoor activities. We realized our dream of rural living in 2008 moving out to Loomis to live on a few acres. Taking care of the property is hard, but relaxing work and I love to work outside. We have two dogs, several chickens, and a couple of goats, and I love exposing my kids to the farm life that I grew up with.

The past few years, I have seen the insurance bureaucracy get worse, the number of patients I need to see every day go up, and most importantly the time able to spend with patients go down. This trend forced me to take a long hard look at how I was spending my time….and realized most of it was not related directly to patient care. I am so excited to evolve my medical practice into this new direct care model that allows me to develop the relationships and spend the time with patients that is so necessary in primary care.

In the process, I have discovered functional medicine, which takes a different approach to the management of chronic disease. Functional medicine integrates all aspects of the patient and their environment to find the source of health problems and support the body’s natural processes for healing instead of merely trying to treat individual symptoms. The additional tools and unique evaluation associated with functional medicine fits nicely into our direct care practice model. Please join me on this journey as we redefine your healthcare together, free from the meddling of insurance companies and government regulations. I look forward to the possibilities that await us both at Placer Private Physicians.

Alex Parker-DeJesus

Nutritionist and Health Coach

Alex is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, health coach and wellness activist. Passionate about health & wellness, her goal is to educate, inspire, and help individuals to take charge of their own health in order to prevent disease & live the highest quality of life possible! She recently moved to the west coast with her husband and is excited to join Dr. Lichti and Dr. Hedman as an integrative & functional dietitian at Placer Private Physicians.

She attended Johnson & Wales University for food service management and culinary, as well as Kennesaw State and Norfolk State for wellness coaching, nutrition & food science, and exercise science. She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics and an American Heart Association CPR Instructor.

In her free time Alex enjoys cooking, hiking (or just being outdoors), and travelling. She is thrilled to be a part of an organization like P3 that recognizes the importance of a health & nutrition! Alex looks forward to working with each and every one of you, helping you toward better health!